1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a presidential election game. More particularly, the invention relates to American politics and enables the players thereof to compete for the Presidency of the United States of America through involvement in a presidential political campaign.
2. Background Description
The Presidency of the United States of America is a democratically elected position which is won by an eligible candidate who successfully competes in a quadrennial national election. Generally, each of the existing political parties endorses and sponsors a presidential candidate at partisan caucuses or primary elections held prior to the election. Although a majority of the American voting public typically votes for a candidate from one of the major political parties, additional candidates may be endorsed and/or sponsored by one or more minor political parties.
According to the presidential election process, a candidate must accumulate a majority of the electoral college votes to be elected to the Office of the President. The only other elective federal official not elected by direct, i.e., popular, vote is the Office of the Vice President. Every fourth year, each state chooses as many electors to the Electoral College as it has senators and representatives in Congress. The founding fathers chose to elect the President of the United States through the Electoral College where each state is allotted its electoral votes according to its population. The Electoral College thus equalizes the power of the vote from state to state. Otherwise, the most populous states would automatically control the elections of the Presidents.
Each state is allocated a number of electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always two (2)) plus the number of its members in the U.S. House of Representatives (which may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined in the census). The more populous a state is, then the more electoral votes it has. There are 100 senators and 435 representatives, which when added to the three electors representing the District of Columbia as provided by the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution, totals 538 members of the Electoral College. Of this number, 270 electoral votes, i.e., a majority vote, are needed to elect the president and vice-president.
The voting decisions of the electors may be based on the outcome or trend of a popular vote that is tallied in each state. However, the outcome of the electoral college vote may not necessarily reflect the outcome of the popular vote of the entire nation that includes all of those votes tallied and reported by each state. Moreover, reporting of the near-final popular vote generally occurs during the evening hours of Election Day with that reporting generally being chronologically staggered from the eastern part of the country to the western part of the country.
It is a common misunderstanding that a majority popular vote for a particular candidate determines the ultimate outcome of the election, when in fact, it is the final electoral college vote that actually determines the successful candidate who may be different from the candidate who won the popular vote. Also, both the popular vote and the electoral college vote may be swayed by changes in voting patterns based on news media-generated projections and predictions as individual state popular votes are tallied and reported to the public prior to the time the polls are closed.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,118,036; 4,299,390; 4,709,926; 5,624,120; and 5,660,390 disclose examples of presidential board games where the players vie for electoral votes to be elected or win the game. None of these games include campaign workers, a campaign headquarters, and a campaign workers pool that come and go with the manipulation of dice and the drawing of cards.